Errin Stanger to step down as director of Arkansas Regional Innovation Hub
NORTH LITTLE ROCK, ARK. – MARCH 6, 2024 – Arkansas Regional Innovation Hub Director Errin Stanger is departing the organization after serving 10 years in various leadership positions at the community makerspace in Argenta.
“Errin has done an incredible job during her decade at the Hub,” said Winrock’s Acting President and CEO Joyjit Deb Roy. “She has filled a number of important roles, becoming deputy director and then making history in 2021 as the Hub’s first woman director. On behalf of Winrock’s board of directors and our entire staff, we thank her for her commitment, and for embodying the spirit of innovation and entrepreneurship that the Hub is now so well known for.”
Stanger will remain actively involved in local nonprofit work through an independent, community-based organization that will provide comprehensive support, advocacy and services to chronically unhoused people in Central Arkansas.
Since opening in 2014, the Hub has provided tools and training to entrepreneurs, students, creatives and makers, preparing them to join and grow Arkansas’s economic ecosystem. Stanger was centrally involved in the organization’s evolution, helping it to become established in the restored industrial space it now occupies in North Little Rock’s revitalized Argenta Arts District.
Over her decade with the Hub, Stanger helped the nonprofit significantly expand its influence as it evolved into a state-of-the-art creative makerspace and center for youth and adults to learn new science, tech, engineering, arts and math skills. To engage youth in towns and rural communities across the state, under Stanger’s leadership, the Hub grew its successful Mobile Makerspace program, taking STEAM programming and learning on the road to reach more than 25,000 students.
Asked about Hub achievements she is proudest of, Stanger cited her team of 15 staff members and the Hub’s network of talented members, entrepreneurs and funders who have shown deep resilience, commitment and responsiveness to the needs of communities, even amidst disasters.
For example, in early 2020, as the COVID pandemic began, Stanger, who was deputy director at the time, tapped the Hub’s network to help lead a Hub-trained makers and members taskforce, linking them to frontline emergency workers in dire need of PPE.
As the pandemic’s grip tightened, shuttering classrooms and limiting job opportunities, the Hub responded with a new vocational jobs training program called Skills to Launch. The 10-week program provides training to young adults in trades including solar panel installation, construction, data and IT, production welding, industrial maintenance, and heating, ventilation, air conditioning and refrigeration.
Last year, in the aftermath of tornadoes that struck both Little Rock and North Little Rock, causing millions of dollars in damage and killing five people in Central Arkansas, Stanger and the Hub responded again – printing and distributing “North Little Rock Strong” t-shirts to kids, city workers and community members, and opening the Hub’s doors to students whose schools had been closed. Hub staff and members also collected and distributed food, clothing and other supplies to those affected.
CONTACT
Timothy May: tim.may@winrock.org.